Water Hauling and Girls' School Attendance Some New Evidence From Ghana

In large parts of the world, a lack of home tap water burdens households as the water must be brought to the house from outside, at great expense in terms of effort and time. This paper studies how such costs affect girls' schooling in Ghana, with an analysis based on four rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys.

Hauling times lower than 20 minutes have a negative but non-significant effect on girlsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ school attendance, whereas hauling times greater than 20 minutes significantly impact the proportion of girls attending school.
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A 50 percent reduction in the time to haul water would increase the proportion of girls 5 to 15 attending school by 2.4 percentage points on the average, with stronger effects for rural communities.
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The effects of hauling time on school attendance are almost exactly the same for boys as for girls. However the impact of household size and composition on school attendance is very different for boys and girls.
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